TASTE: Holy water from Our Lady of Lourdes grotto

Our Lady of Lourdes grotto is an unlikely sight on a quiet street corner in the East Bronx. A craggy mountain of rocks rises from the courtyard outside Saint Lucy’s Roman Catholic Church, on the corner of Mace Avenue and Bronxwood Avenue; a trickle of a waterfall cascades down its face from beneath the feet of a Virgin Mary statue. From dawn to dusk, a steady line of visitors—mostly Hispanic, Albanian, and Italian, from the neighborhood—snakes toward the cave, carrying empty bottles, laminated prayer cards, treasures in Ziploc bags, and rosaries, patiently awaiting the Virgin’s blessing in the form of holy water. People not only drink and wash their bodies with the water, but reportedly use it to clean their cars and homes, conferring its sacred properties wherever they can.

Cars and minivans double-park outside, releasing pilgrims stopping by on their way here or there. Pigeons—surely the most blessed of their breed—roost among the stones like sentries, despite the spikes installed to deter them.

On the day I visited, it so happened that I had a migraine but had forgotten water with which to swallow my medication. It occurred to me that maybe I could take the pill with a sip of holy water from the waterfall, and avail myself of its curative properties in the process. I spotted a Mister Softee truck, its jingle weary on this end-of-summer weekend, and chased it down to ask if I could buy an empty cup for a quarter. The bemused ice cream man obliged, after offering several times to fill it up with ice cream, and though I was sheepish about showing up as a non-Catholic to a sacred site with a cup emblazoned with a grinning soft-serve-headed clown, I needn’t have been. The courtyard was one of the most nonjudgmental places I’ve visited in the city, each person focused on their own needs and prayers. Plus, I was relieved to see they were carrying all manner of receptacles for their holy water, from shopping trolleys filled with gallon-size Lactaid milk jugs (a popular choice), to Western Beef shopping bags filled with empty Jarritos soda bottles, to tiny plastic travel bottles from CVS.

Completed in 1939, Our Lady of Lourdes is one of many similar sites around the world: man-made versions of  and homages to a natural cave in Lourdes, France, where, in 1858, a fourteen-year-old girl allegedly saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Her vision there was soon followed by those of many other pilgrims. She was later sainted, and the spring water from the French cave was thereafter believed to be holy. According to Saint Lucy’s website, in the 1930s a Catholic priest named Monsignor Pasquale Lombardo, inspired by his visit to the French cave, began work on its replica in his neighborhood, hoping to bring some of the French magic to the local parish in the form of “the Lourdes of the Bronx.” The fieldstones for the Bronx grotto were hand-cut by an Italian craftsman and piled up to form the thirty-foot cave.

The holy water here—though unapologetically from the New York City municipal water system, albeit blessed annually by a priest—is nevertheless believed to cure illnesses of all sorts, whether by touch or by taste. Regardless of one’s belief in its efficacy, the courtyard and the cave have a peaceful energy shot through with longing. Visitors linger to pray and reflect on benches facing the cave, while others lurk closer to the cave’s mouth, eyes closed, taking in the sound of the falling water, lighting candles, and saying rosaries. There is apparently no restriction on how much holy water each visitor may take.

With my Mister Softee cup in hand, I joined the queue. As I waited, I watched children sliding down the rocks and frolicking in the stream at the base of the waterfall, which was speckled with coins. One woman removed her shoes and stood directly under the falling water, rubbing it over her legs and feet. On TripAdvisor, one visitor reports: “I had eye problems as a child and my mother used to place the holy water on my face and we would also take sips of the water”; another said: “I couldn’t get pregnant because of fibroids, Mother-in-law took me here, took of my shoes and literally bathed my feet and legs and my belly with the blessed water and I kid you not, when I returned to the doctors, my fibroids were gone!!!!! I was pregnant in two months! You must believe!”

A teen girl with waist-length hair and a crop top dipped her hands into the stream and ran the water through her mane; it shimmered in the sun. A mother and father approached the shrine carrying a toddler in a skullcap. They touched the water to his skullcap with intention, then kissed his cheek. A small girl rode her pink Peppa Pig scooter up and down the shallow steps while her mother filled the family’s bottles. The clouds shifted and appeared to radiate from the top of the shrine.

One man had brought a bouquet of bodega flowers that he tried several times to throw up into the niche above the statue; it kept tumbling back down, knocked out of place by other bouquets. Finally he managed by climbing hand over hand up the rockface, and his family laughed and cheered. When it was my turn, I ran my fingers under the stream, and, following the lead of the people before me, splashed it over my face and the back of my neck.

Then I filled my ice cream cup and took a sip. Even though I knew it was just city tap water, it tasted unusually smooth and cool and pure. Power of suggestion, or of blessing?

After flicking the water over their clothing and sipping from their bottles, one woman turned to her friend, her face alight with joy. “Oh my God, I feel so happy,” she said, reaching out to clasp her hands. “Thank you for making this possible.” The rocks glinted in the late-afternoon sun. The pigeons roosting above the waterfall cooed and pruned their feathers. I realized I had gotten so wrapped in the energy of the space and the taste of the holy water that I had forgotten to swallow my pill. But my migraine had disappeared—at least for the moment.